Needlework

Reyna sat in the dim light of the Hall of Gaia. It was quiet tonight in Onsallas, with just a handful of the Daughters nearby. They were practicing meditation with some of the Daughters in Training who had drawn tonight to be on duty in case fighting broke out. It was a good way to spend time when one must be alert for the worst.

Reyna herself was not on duty. She simply couldn’t sleep and found it better to sit here in the firelight, her needle drawing thread through the fabric of the hangerok she was preparing for the upcoming dinner that was be the held in New Hope. Perhaps she could convince them of what projects would bring them true greatness instead of the follies her cousin was making them think possible.

But, thinking too far into the future was something she considered dangerous. Here, on the edge of the Dirge it was dangerous to think too far ahead. Every day was change, and even the seasons could be unpredictable if the earth itself took it into her mind to be difficult. The only thing Reyna had ever found consistent was magic.

Mana formed the warp and the weft of the world in an immaculate, divine version of the muslin that was pooled on her lap. The pieces of the dress had been formed into shape as Gaia had brought the world into existence from the void that must have been before she made the world. And much like her needle trailed thread behind it in patterns that were intended, Daughters of Gaia (and the other casters), pulled magic together into spells that let the will of the caster be made true on the world.

Needlework held the answers to many things, including having a calm center. Meditation was much like the spinning: The spinner drew fiber from the prepared roving as the Daughter drew mana from the roving Gaia had prepared for them.

The most complicated lessons came in the form of the most useful of seemingly mundane tasks. To make clothing was to create, to find a connection to Gaia that a Daughter should value; for through her creation of beauty through needle and thread a Daughter could bring herself closer to Gaia.